Who: Hera (and Rhiannon's exhusband, Mickey.) What: Hera Regains Herself Where: Hera and Zeus's Home When: February 7th, 2020 - 2:00am Warnings: Violence Against Women, Miscarriage, Violence in General
Note: Over the next week, it will get out to Olympians, Neutrals, and Titans alike that Hera's powers came back in a big way.
It was late. Honestly, she wasn't even sure what time it was. She just knew that she woke up to Zeus muttering something about lightning bolts in his sleep and that her mouth was as dry as cotton. Wandering down the many stairs to the kitchen, Hera was in search of a glass of water. The house was a virtual palace compared to where Rhiannon came from, and it made her miss their palace on Olympus. It was still there, of course. Still gleaming and ivory and marble and gold, though in disrepair from the wars. And while she and Zeus were in the process of making plans to go and reclaim it fully in March, it still seemed so far away. A relic from something long and lost.
Standing in front of the fridge as the glass filled from the filter, Hera was gone in thought, somewhere on Olympus, not in the kitchen of her Manhattan home. And so when the yelling began, she didn't hear it. It wasn't until the distinct sound of a bottle hitting the kitchen window that she came back to the present moment. Her hand jerked and water spilled out on her skin, causing her to drop the glass and shatter it about the same time the bottle broke against the house. With a yelp, she turned her head sharply towards the sound and gasped when she realized who was outside.
Mickey hadn't ever been a kind man to Rhiannon. When he was twenty-two, he had stolen a sixteen-year-old girl away from her life and swept her into something far worse. Her father, while a bad man, was predictable. Mickey had been a drunk - and a violent one at that. More than once, Rhiannon had ended up with black eyes and bruised arms. Long sleeves in the summer. "I just fell down the stairs." "I ran into a door, trying to carry too many loads of laundry at once." "I'm such a klutz." The excuses had run from her lips like a mantra.
Finally, she'd fled from him and made it to a shelter where she'd been able to get her life back. There, she'd also found Zeus and regained more than just her dignity. Though she'd had near-miss sightings of Mickey over the past six months, Hera had never expected to see him at her house. This house was supposed to be a safe haven for her. At first, she reached for her pocket to get her phone, but she quickly realized that she didn't have pockets in her pajama shirt and her phone was secured in the bedroom on the charger.
As she watched Mickey stand there, ranting in the darkness, something inside of her flipped. She was done being afraid of this man. Rather than flee to call 911, Hera felt her self move towards the kitchen door and out into the night. "You aren't welcome here." The man, once more drunk beyond comprehension, began to shout slurs and epithets at his ex-wife. "I said," her voice stony and sharp, "you aren't welcome here." Hera held up her hand and with a gust of air that she'd forgotten she could manipulate, flung Mickey across the lawn, sending him crashing into the small fountain in the back.
Walking over to him, her bare feet and legs not feeling the cold, Hera stood over Mickey's fallen body. "After this night. I will ever see you again." Around her, Hera's aura began to glow a dangerous red, the color of the heavens on fire. From every pore in her body, anger flowed from her. For a moment, she stood taller than her normally minute frame, and she was more. Curses of insanity left her mouth as her excuses for his actions once had. She watched his body twitch and his eyes drain of color.
Mickey began to laugh maniacally and claw at his skin. In her rage, she saw his hands distort, his fingers become the claws of a beast and his face become shredded and bloody. All the while, between his cries and his laughter, he pleaded with her to stop. Hera didn't hear him. She only heard the thousand lies he'd told her as he'd thrown her into walls, as he'd kicked her stomach into a miscarriage, as he'd tried to ruin her. Her limbs trembled from the ire she felt for him, and she flicked her hand again and sent his broken body once more crashing into the fountain, this time not into the marble font but the drained basin, breaking the bricks therein.
And then she collapsed. The words left her tongue and she shook on the frozen grass. Somewhere in the house, she thought she saw lights turn on and thought maybe she heard Zeus awake and coming for her. It didn't matter, though. If she died in the yard that night, Rhiannon died free and Hera died herself once again.